Thursday, July 25, 2013

Why then do liberals disallow some choices?

What do liberals believe about morality? I recently quoted Dr Leslie Cannold, an Australian ethicist, as follows:

Defining our own good, and living our lives in pursuit of it, is at the heart of a moral life.

So what matters to Dr Cannold is not what we happen to choose but that we get to define our own good.

There were readers of this site who doubted Dr Cannold's sincerity. They pointed out that traditionalists aren't allowed to define the good as we would like to and that certain choices that traditionalists would make are disallowed. Dr Cannold and other liberals, these readers claimed, are therefore not following a logical philosophy and are asserting their power in society in an arbitrary way.

But I don't think that's right. The liberal system logically forbids traditionalists to choose the kind of society we would like to have (by "logically" I don't mean that it's right that liberalism does this, but that the outcome follows from first principles).

It goes like this. Liberals believe in a freedom to self-determine. Therefore liberals don't want things that are predetermined to influence what we can or cannot choose to do.

But qualities like our sex and our race are predetermined. Therefore, a common liberal position is that:

i) it is permissible to freely identify with these qualities privately, i.e. as a matter of your own personal life

ii) it is wrong to assert these qualities in ways that might limit the choices that other people make.

You can, therefore, identify at a personal level with your own particular ancestry, but it would be considered wrong to deny someone entry as a migrant to your country on the basis of race. Similarly, you can choose to identify as a man or a woman, but you cannot select for employment on the basis of sex. If you deny someone an ability to choose on the basis of an unchosen, predetermined quality like their race or sex it is treated as discrimination based on these qualities, i.e. as "sexism" or "racism," and as a denial of equal opportunity.

So it is no use for a traditionalist to argue that his good is to have an immigration policy that leaves him with an ethnic homeland of his own or that his preference is for an army that does not employ women as combat troops, as both of these options discriminate on grounds that are unacceptable within the liberal system.

That's why traditionalists have to dig deeper and challenge liberalism on the basis of first principles. The issue to be fought is whether a freedom to self-determine is really an adequate basis on which to found a society. Traditionalists would argue that individual autonomy is not always and everywhere the overriding good to be pursued. To make it so is ultimately dissolving of the particular society you belong to. A wiser policy would be to accept a range of goods and to order them so that the social framework fits together (works together) to the greatest extent possible.

A couple of other observations. This aspect of liberalism, that you can hold to something as a private feeling but that you cannot assert it in a way that might limit what someone else can choose, explains those liberal politicians who talk positively about their own ancestry whilst enacting "non-discriminatory" migration policies which spell the end of particular ancestral identities.

The former Australian PM, Malcolm Fraser, was reportedly proud of his Scottish heritage, but was also an open borders man. An earlier PM, Sir Robert Menzies, was famous for his regard for his British heritage but oversaw the transformation of Australia into a mixed European nation. Menzies described his affection for his British heritage as being "sentimental" (a private sentiment rather than an identity to publicly uphold). A more recent PM, Paul Keating, identified not only with his Irish ancestry but with a strain of Australian larrikin culture - but, again, was fervently open-bordered. I have even heard some serving Labor MPs speak positively of their UK connections, but it would never cross their minds that such identities should be upheld through migration policy.

Finally, the argument has been raised that liberals aren't sincere in wanting people to self-define their own good and make their own autonomous choices, because the liberal state is happy to intrude paternalistically in discouraging smoking or in making people wear seat belts and so on.

But the seat belt or smoking issues don't really contravene liberal principles as these do not deny equal opportunity in the manner I described above but are rather "neutral" health measures that apply to everyone equally.

If liberalism claims to be about autonomy and free choice, but then insists that certain autonomously chosen free choices are impermissible, then we simply should not take their claims seriously. Their claims are lying nonsense. FULL STOP. THE END.

The liberal system logically forbids traditionalists to choose the kind of society we would like to have (by "logically" I don't mean that it's right that liberalism does this, but that the outcome follows from first principles).

The premise is false, and therefore the conclusions that follow from it are NOT logically valid. They may be internally consistent, but that is not the same thing as logically valid.

"You may only make the free choices that I allow you to make" -- this is your idea of a logical philosophy? Seriously?

Therefore, a common liberal position is that:

i) it is permissible to freely identify with these qualities privately, i.e. as a matter of your own personal life

ii) it is wrong to assert these qualities in ways that might limit the choices that other people make.

Actually, no, liberals do not believe you are allowed to do or think forbidden things in your own private life.

Moreover, they believe in asserting their own ideas in ways that limit the choices that other people make.

Therefore, in practice both these ideals are violated and cannot be taken seriously as an authentic expression of liberal belief.

These are, in short, lies.

That's why traditionalists have to dig deeper and challenge liberalism on the basis of first principles.

Quite honestly, I regard this effort as similar to a Jew in Nazi Germany digging deeper into Mein Kampf and Der Sturmer in order to challenge Nazism on the basis of first principles. The Jew could expose all the fallacies and destructiveness of the underlying philosophy, but (a) he would never change the opinion of the average Nazi that his philosophy was good (any more than you can change the opinions of your liberal teacher friends), and (b) the actual "first principles" of the philosophy are not what is overtly stated in important works.

The first principles of liberalism with respect to conservatives are the same as the first principles of Nazis with respect to Jews: you are evil, we hate you, as soon as we have power we will destroy you.

Poke all the holes in Mein Kampf or Dr Leslie Cannold that you want, those actual first principles will not change.

Now you're making me think you're trolling. The James Kalb piece is very good but it makes similar arguments to the one I made above. For instance,

Given such a view, the uniquely rational approach to social order is to treat it as a soulless, technically rational arrangement for maximizing equal satisfaction of equally valid preferences. That principle claims to maximize effective freedom, but it narrowly limits what is permissible lest we interfere with the equal freedom of others or the efficient operation of the system. Private hobbies and indulgences are acceptable, since they leave other people alone.

James Kalb adds to what I said in this post a focus on liberalism as a managerial system but otherwise we are on the same page.

Nah, you either have to read the arguments and respond to them or else your comments simply derail the thread - it's trolling.

If I write a post explaining why liberals claim to be for choice but then disallow certain choices you can't then write "their claims are lying nonsense. Full stop".

How does that contribute to the discussion? It's an attempt to close the discussion down before it begins.

Similarly, at the end you seem to suggest that there is no point in discussing a liberal philosophy to understand it better and challenge it more effectively.

Again, that has the effect of trying to shut down discussion before it has even taken place. It is an attempt at blocking rather than at clarifying anything.

Nah, maybe I should publicise some of the emails I get. Every now and then I get an email from someone saying "Thanks for the blog. It helped me to think about what I had been brought up to believe and to shift away from liberalism."

That's part of what I have to try to do and it's up to me to do it as effectively as I can. It doesn't help if you are constantly not just in a negative mood (which would be OK if you were writing specific criticisms of specific arguments) but attempting just to shut down a discussion before it begins.

Nah, I will try just once more to explain something to you. You wrote:

"You may only make the free choices that I allow you to make" - this is your idea of a logical philosophy?"

Liberals themselves would not see it that way. They themselves would think in these terms:

"You may only make the free choices that work within a system of free choices, i.e. that work within a system that is focused on individual self-determination".

That is where we have to come in and explain why this position is unacceptable. We have to explain, for instance, that it is not just minor choices or preferences that are disallowed but many of the things in life that matter most. That is why the liberal framework itself has to be jettisoned in favour of something that allows the things that matter to stand.

Regarding smoking and seat belts. Doesn't the modern Liberal state take the position that some of our choices are unwise and let the experts advise against them? Their position seems to be, yeah, you can do these things, but we're going to constantly tell you they are bad choices for you to make.

Cecilhenry, that states the problem very well. The things that matter are the things that are disallowed. What is left are choices that concern only ourselves - career is a big one, then various lifestyle and consumer choices. Because these fit within the liberal system they dominate increasingly.

Menzies was very much a liberal. He explained the choice of the name "Liberal Party" this way:

We took the name “Liberal” because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his rights, and his enterprise

Menzies had already decided on a civic rather than an ethnic nationalism. This means that he believed that the Anglo achievement was to build a liberal system of government and to create liberal values. Therefore, if these were kept alive so too was the Anglo tradition. Therefore, as long as immigrants assimilated to these liberal traditions there was no real change to the Australian tradition.

It's true that Menzies shifted only slowly to non-European immigration. Whilst he was PM there were a number of small changes allowing greater numbers of non-Europeans to study and to migrate permanently to Australia. But it wasn't until he retired that the larger changes were made.

So he was "conservative" in the sense of making the changes gradually rather than as a radical shift. But in terms of principle he was a liberal who did not care about preserving an ethnic nationalism.

Liberals tolerate a variety of individual view points in theory, but that isn't how society works in practice.

For one thing, most people care what others think about them, and are reluctant to honestly express their views if they deviate from the majority opinion of the cliches they inhabit.

I doubt for example, that someone who worked for a university education department would be made to feel comfortable if they said they believed in racial differences in IQ or that physical punishment was a good idea.

Similarly, an economic nationalist would probably think twice about criticising free trade and econommic migration at a Davos meeting.

If liberal society really worked according to its principles then people would freely go around saying things like "I'm racist in my private life, and don't see anything wrong with that, but I don't discriminate at work."

Indeed, the recent George Zimmerman case in the US illustrates that liberal society does judge people according to their personal views (the court investigated Zimmerman's personal history to check if he had any animus towards Black people).

Humans are social animals and their personal views (and how they express them) are heavily influenced by the wider political and social environment.